


Loading Game...

by Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Based on a Tumblr Post, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Crying, Gen, Post-Canon, Unresolved Tension, but I tagged them cuz they're super plot important, everyone except Gordon and Benrey are only mentioned, mild body horror, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 09:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30086910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat/pseuds/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat
Summary: Gordon's been trying to get back into his game for almost a month to get his new friends somewhere new, but something's been keeping him out. He finally manages to load up the game again, but he's met with something he wasn't expecting... and realizes that, maybe, he should let go.---Based on a post by micheal-istrash on tumblr (their twitter is Michealistrash_ and her instagram is micheal.istrash if you'd like to follow her there too!)
Relationships: Benrey & Gordon Freeman, Benrey/Gordon Freeman, Gordan Freeman & The Science Team, Tommy Coolatta & The G-Man, if you squint
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56





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**Author's Note:**

> This idea was just... too good for me to not write (although I got permission first!)... you should absolutely go follow Micheal! His art is seriously so good, it makes my serotonin go nuts... I hope you enjoy this first though!

After almost a month of messing around with code that he barely understood, and somehow seemed to always be changing, Gordon clicked on the “Load Game” option of the main menu of Half Life 1 only for something to actually pop up. He gasped, pumped his hand in the air and scrambled for his VR set. He hadn’t been sure that getting into the game would be important to get his new friends out, but if he was with them he could at least tell them that he was trying to help. He slipped the headset on and held his breath as he stared at the progress bar that stood out against the black void he was standing in.

Except… it wasn’t moving.

Half Life was an old game, and this copy was already weird, so Gordon wasn’t too concerned. But, after what felt like an eternity, it still hadn’t moved. He decided to get an actual look around at where he was, and saw that… yeah, it was just a void. He was wearing the HEV suit, which wasn’t supposed to happen, but did the first time he played the game anyway, and his gun arm was still secure and… wait. He was starting the game over, why did he have the gun arm? He lifted it up towards his face (obviously not pointing it at himself), but it had the same hitbox as it did last time, so it wasn’t just a cosmetic glitch. Maybe he’d messed with the code too much?

“Yo.”

He yelped and jumped, spinning around quickly and holding the gun arm out to whoever had just spoken. He relaxed despite himself when he realized that it was Benrey. “Um… hi,” he said, lowering the gun.

“What’re you doing here?” Benrey asked, looking him over. “Decided to play again? Going for a, uh… for a world record? Gonna one hundred percent it this time? Maybe do a speedrun?”

“You know this is all a game?” Gordon asked. He’d figured that Benrey did, but Dr. Coomer was the only one who’d ever told him to his face that he knew.

“Um, no shit,” Benrey replied, “we all do. Or, uh… we do now, at least.” His gaze drifted to Gordon’s arm. “You gonna use that for your speedrun?”

“I’m not- no!” Gordon said. “I’m not here to play again!” Benrey raised an eyebrow. “I’m here to get you guys out! Or… the Science Team. Not you.” Gordon cleared his throat and he could tell that Benrey didn’t believe him. “I mean, I was at least going to tell you guys that I’m trying to. Uh, not _you_ guys, but, um-”

“I get it.” Benrey’s voice was clipped, more emotional than Gordon had ever heard it before. Even during the boss fight his theatrics were… well, just that. It didn’t feel real. This definitely was. “We all heard Dr. Coomer’s little speech, y’know.”

“Yeah?” Gordon asked. “Then you know what I’m trying to do.”

“He’s changed his mind.”

Gordon scoffed. “You really think I’d believe you?” He asked.

Benrey was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he replied, and Gordon had to strain his ears to hear him. “I guess I’d hoped so.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Gordon said, and his stomach twisted at how angry he sounded. “Look, can you just let me in? I just want to talk to the others, I’ll tell them the plan I’ve got. I think I might be able to get you guys into G-Mod, your models are already there and everything! I’d just have to get your, uh… brains, for lack of a better term, in there and then-”

“We don’t want to go,” Benrey said. 

“Okay, cut that out!” Gordon said. “Just because you’re upset doesn’t mean you have to keep the rest of them trapped here!”

“Do you think we were trapped before you came along?!?” Benrey shouted, and Gordon stumbled backwards. He managed to stay on his feet, but the red Sweet Voice streaming out of Benrey’s mouth made him feel like his legs would give out anyways. “Were we trapped for years before you? Do you really think that everything revolves around you? Are you that egotistical?” Benrey wiped at his mouth, and swallowed thickly so the Sweet Voice would stop. “We’re _happy_ without you. We were happy before you, and now we’re happy after you.”

“But… but Dr. Coomer said-”

“Things went back to the way they were,” Benrey explained. “Dr. Coomer is boxing again, fighting people instead of aliens, for fun not because he’s just trying to survive. Bubby finally got the grant he wanted, the one that he was going to get only two days after what happened when you showed up, the one that got him away from the shitty biology department, the one that got him away from his tube. Darnold’s department is still alive because you weren’t here to fuck everything up. He finished the Evil Powerade, he’s in line for another promotion.” Benrey swallowed heavily, and Gordon took a cautious step forward. He hadn’t seen Benrey cry before, but he knew what someone who was going to cry looked like.

“But… what about-” Benrey continued before he could ask anything.

“Tommy is…” He swallowed again, and Gordon stepped forward again when he saw a tear slide down Benrey’s cheek. “He misses you. We _all_ miss you.” He looked up at Gordon to meet his eyes, and Gordon almost reached out to dry the tears that were starting to fall in earnest. “We wish you were here. I…” He wiped at his face and didn’t continue.

“If you all miss me, why won’t you let me help you?” Gordon asked quietly.

“Because every time that you try to load up the game, we get moved back to where we’re supposed to be at the beginning of the game,” Benrey said, equally quiet. “We’re prepping for a test that we _know_ will end in nothing but tragedy.” He wiped at his face again, and Gordon reached forward to hold his face gently. He let him, even leaned into the touch. “You almost got in the first time, right?”

“Y-Yeah,” Gordon said.

“I kicked you out,” Benrey said, “because the second I realized what was happening, I went to find the others, and…” He sighed heavily, and indigo Sweet Voice came out with his breath. “Tommy was curled up on the break room floor, already crying his eyes out. Dr. Coomer was tearing into the room a second later, asking if we’d seen Bubby, asking if he was hurt yet.” Some of the Sweet Voice landed on Gordon’s face, and he almost collapsed at the absolute heartbreak that followed it.

He knew Benrey wasn’t lying.

“I can’t get you out if I don’t load up the game,” Gordon reasoned as he wiped away more of Benrey’s tears. “I won’t play it, I swear, I just have to load it so I can figure out how to transfer you guys to a different game, and-”

“Were you even paying attention to me?” Benrey asked, and the Sweet Voice turned a dark red before it fizzled out entirely. “We don’t want you here! We’re happy without you! Tommy gets to see his dad because he’s not running around trying to fix your mistakes-” Gordon wasn’t sure if Benrey meant Tommy or Mr. Coolatta, “-Bubby is a fucking human again, Dr. Coomer gets to be himself without having to worry about his clones hurting anyone because they’ve panicked, Darnold doesn’t have to cower in fear in his ruined department, and I get to-!” Benrey stopped himself suddenly.

“Benrey, you don’t-”

“Shut up.” Benrey shoved Gordon away. “We’d rather miss you than actually see you, okay? Just quit the game. Leave us alone.”

Gordon bit his lip. Benrey wasn’t lying, but… “You guys can’t really be happy stuck in Black Mesa all the time!” He argued. “I mean, you never get to leave, do you? That must be awful!”

“That’s what we all signed up for when we applied for the job!” Benrey said.

“You probably didn’t even apply!” Gordon shouted back, because it was so much easier to pin this on Benrey than it was to try and face the fact that he was the one hurting his friends. “You’re an alien, I bet you just snatched up a body!”

“SHUT UP!” Benrey screamed, and his body shifted violently, growing and shrinking, adding and subtracting eyes and limbs and… It calmed down after a moment of Benrey gripping his helmet and muttering to himself. “I-It doesn’t do that when… when you’re not here,” he said after a minute. “I don’t have to be the bad guy when there’s no good guy to fight.” He looked back up at Gordon, his expression completely wrecked. “Please, just leave. You ruin everything, just leave.”

“I’m not leaving until I see the others,” Gordon said stubbornly. “You… I believe you, but I just want to see them one more time.”

“The game autosaves,” Benrey pointed out. “You can’t just come in and then quit. If you get into the game, then it will have already started. And I don’t know what will happen if you delete your files completely. We might all die.”

Gordon was silent, before he sat on the ground and crossed his arms as best as he could when one didn’t articulate. “I’m not leaving until I see them,” he said as he turned away from Benrey.

“Oh, sure, _I’m_ the one that acts like a child,” Benrey mumbled to himself as he sat down as well. “Tough nuts, I’m not letting you through.”

“Then I guess we’re stuck here for an eternity,” Gordon said.

“No, you’ll have to leave to get food or sleep or something eventually,” Benrey replied.

“I can leave the game running while I do that,” Gordon pointed out. Benrey went silent. “Right. Just let me in.”

“You’re… you can’t…” Benrey stood again and moved so he was in front of Gordon. “You can’t do that.”

“I sure as hell can,” Gordon said.

“No, no, you can’t do that,” Benrey repeated, and his face was starting to shift and grow extra eyes. “You have to leave. You can’t play the game, so… so you leave. Rage quit, get all pissy and decide to put it down forever.”

“I didn’t do that the whole time I was dealing with _you_ ,” Gordon spat.

“No… no, no, don’t do this,” Benrey said, suddenly falling to his knees. Gordon scooted back. “You loaded the game, they’re all in their spots, they’re all panicking, waiting for you to walk in and… and…” He reached out for Gordon, so he backed up more. “They won’t know where I am, you have to leave before… before…”

“I’m not leaving,” Gordon said, but he was getting less and less sure of that by the second. “I need to see them, Benrey.”

“You can’t, I won’t let you!” Benrey got to his feet again and grabbed Gordon’s neck tightly, lifting him off the ground. “Just quit the game!”

“No! Fuck you!” Gordon tried to kick at Benrey’s torso, but it didn’t seem to hurt him.

“Just quit!” Benrey screamed.

“I won’t!”

“If you don’t quit, I’ll have to kill you!”

“Then do it! Kill me!” Gordon regretted it the second he said it, because a pathetic line of light gray Sweet Voice trickled out of Benrey’s mouth, going downwards for the first time that Gordon had ever seen. “Kill me,” he said again, much quieter.

“I can’t…” Benrey whispered. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“You’re apologizing to me for not being able to kill me?” Gordon asked as Benrey lowered him to the ground.

“No.”

Gordon stared at Benrey as he went to sit in front of the progress bar and stare at it. The Sweet Voice trailed behind him, still a pathetic trickle and the sickly gray color. Gordon looked up at the progress bar as well and realized that it was inching forward at a snail's pace, even slower than a frustratingly slow computer update. “You can’t keep me out forever,” Gordon said, but his mocking tone failed and he just sounded sad. Benrey didn’t reply and pressed his face against his knees, and Gordon listened as he sobbed quietly. “Don’t cry,” Gordon said, and just like before, his harsh words sounded comforting. “Benrey, don’t cry.” Benrey didn’t reply, but his crying got quieter. It didn’t stop, but he seemed like he was trying to hide it. “C’mon, I’m trying to help you.” Gordon approached him slowly and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to help you all.”

“We don’t _want_ your help,” Benrey said. “Can you really not listen to me? Do you hate me that much?” He looked up at Gordon, his eyes red with tears. “If you hate me so much, then leave me alone.” He turned his attention back to the progress bar, which had managed to make it to about twenty-five percent, having made a massive jump. 

Gordon stared at it for a long moment, and another impressive jump brought it up to fifty percent. He realized that Benrey was getting quieter, his body seemed fuzzy, he looked… exhausted. “It takes energy to do that?” Gordon asked. Benrey didn’t reply. “Does… does it hurt?” Benrey didn’t reply with words, but a pathetic bit of red Sweet Voice came out of his mouth.

Gordon ripped his headset off and shut the game down. He stared at his steam account, at the large “play” button for Half Life 1. He almost jumped when he realized the banner at the top of the menu had changed. It was a picture of Tommy and Benrey in the break room, laughing together. It wasn’t a screenshot, it didn’t look like it, and it was the two of them, not random models. They both had sodas in front of them, and Tommy was wearing his hat. Gordon felt like he was shaking as he went to the game’s page in the store. He scrolled through what was supposed to be screenshots advertising the game, but was now a series of pictures of the Science Team.

Dr. Coomer taking someone down in the underground boxing ring while Bubby cheered him on, Tommy and Darnold working on potions together, Bubby grinning and crying as he held up a paper that said something about a grant while the others cheered behind him. Tommy, his dad, and Sunkist in some part of Black Mesa that Gordon didn’t recognize but seemed to be Tommy’s department, Benrey talking with the other guard that had been there when Gordon had first played the game (Jefferum?), all of Gordon’s friends sitting on a couch in what he could only assume was a Black Mesa dorm, playing video games and laughing.

He actually did jump when he got a new Steam message.

_johnwicklover1994: thanks. don’t come back._


End file.
